“Cap—”

“Now, drink.”

Her outrage could not compete with her misery or the heat of his hand around hers. Liquor fumes curled up her nostrils. She coughed. “Wh-What is it?”

“Brandy. I regret that we are all out of champagne. But this will do the trick much quicker in any case.”

She peered into the glass. “I’ve n-never—”

“Yes, I know, you’ve never drunk spirits before.” He tilted her hand up, pressing the edge of the glass against her frozen lips. “Tell me another bedtime story, little governess wearing a king’s ransom around your neck.”

She did not bother correcting him. She drank. The brandy scalded her throat, and the base of her tongue crimped. But when the warmth spread through her chest she understood.

He released her hand and watched her take another sip. She coughed again and her eyes watered.

“You needn’t drink it all in one swill,” he murmured.

“I told you I haven’t drunk b-brandy before.”

“So you say.”

“C-Captain, if you—”

“How do you feel? Any warmer?”

“Why m-must you always interrupt m-me?”

“We haven’t spoken enough for an ‘always’ to exist yet. You have done all in your power not to come within twenty feet of me since you boarded my ship and refused my bed.”

Her gaze shot from the glass to his face.

He lifted a brow. “True?”

“N-No.”

She didn’t think he believed her.

“Now another,” he said, sliding the bottle across the table toward her.

“I will b-become intoxicated if I h-have another.” Her head was muddled already. But she was warm. Warmer than she’d been in days. She feared it had less to do with the brandy than with the man’s quietly wolfish gaze upon her.

He leaned back in the chair, his long legs stretching out to one side of her, trapping her against the table. He folded his arms over his chest. “What are you afraid of, duchess? That under the influence of alcohol you will abandon your haughty airs and do something we will both regret in the morning?”

Men had attempted to cajole her, to seduce her, to make love to her with words so that she would succumb to them. They had treated her to endless flatteries, and when that had not sufficed they had forced her. No man had ever spoken to her like this, so frankly. And no man had ever made her want to do something she would regret in the morning.

But his words now were not meant to seduce.

“You are ch-challenging me, aren’t you?” she said. “T-Testing my m-mettle, like you would test any sailor aboard your ship.”

“Do you wish to be a sailor now, Miss Caulfield? Trade in the dreary life of a governess for adventure on the high seas? I suppose I could arrange that.”

She set her glass on the table beside the bottle. “F-Fill it.”

He chuckled. She liked the sound of it. When he looked at her with amusement, she imagined he actually found her amusing.

She was not amusing. She was serious, professional, determined, and responsible. Except for boarding a ruffian’s ship and sitting before him wearing a blanket, she’d done nothing especially adventuresome since she could remember.

She lifted the glass to her lips. “I am n-not afraid of anything. Especially not of m-men.”

“I begin to believe it.” A smile lurked at the corner of his beautiful mouth. The cabin was a haze of mellow woods and salt-smelling air and heat growing inside her. She could not seem to look away from his mouth. It was not in fact wise to sit before him wearing only a blanket.

“This is u-unwise,” she heard herself say.

“Medicine is rarely easy to swallow.” His voice seemed a bit rough.

She dragged her attention to her glass.

“Why do you cover your hair?” he said abruptly.

“Because I do n-not wish it to be seen by rapacious s-sea captains.” She took another sip of brandy. “Next question.”

He laughed. She did not like it. She loved it—warm, rich, and confident. His laughter burrowed into her, into someplace deeply buried.

“What thoughts had you so lost in bemusement atop that you did not notice even the rain, duchess?”

“I have t-two sisters.” She could not tell him of her fear. “I have not seen them in an age. I m-miss them.”

“Tell me about them.” The golden lamplight cast his features in light and shadows so that he did look mythical. It was not her imagination or the brandy. It was him.

“Why?”

“I have a brother.” He gestured to the framed drawing on the wall. “Common interest. And, given your earlier refusal of my bed, we’ve nothing better to do tonight.”

“D-Do you speak to all women in this manner?”

“Only governesses wearing little more than a blanket.”

“Do you come across th-those often?”

“Never before.”

Over the rim of the glass she met his gaze. The brandy rushed down her throat. She sputtered.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a neatly pressed white kerchief. He set it on the table between them. She took it up and dabbed at her watering eyes, studying the charcoal drawing. The boy’s eyes were shadowed sockets of fear, his shoulders hunched, the lines of his face severe. Yet the skill of the artist had brought forth his natural beauty, despite the darkness.

“That p-picture is of your brother?”

“A self-portrait.”

“At s-such a young age he is an artist?”

“He is now six-and-twenty. He drew that from memory. Now tell me of your sisters.”

She set down the handkerchief. “Eleanor is g-good and fair, with golden hair and golden-green eyes, and t-tall and slender like a Greek m-maiden of old.”

“Athena, warrior goddess.”

“Wise, but not a warrior. She would rather read than ride or walk or do j-just about anything else. She spends her days tr-translating texts for the Rev— for our father from Latin into English. No one knows. Others th-think it is his work. When I asked her once if she m-minded, she said she preferred it.”

“She is modest.”

“Perhaps.”

He leaned forward to refill her glass, and she smelled clean sea and warmth upon him. What would it be like to be held in his muscular arms?

She must be drunk already.

She had been grabbed, groped, clutched. She had never been held by a man.

He poured brandy into his glass and set the bottle on the table. “And your other sister?”

“Ravenna is a Gypsy.”

The glass halted halfway to his mouth.

Arabella chewed the inside of her lip. “Dark eyes. D-Dark hair. Cannot be indoors. Cannot b-be still. Cannot be quelled.”

“That last is like her sister, it seems.” He drank the contents of his glass in one swallow.

“I am responsible for them.” The words tumbled from her tongue in a rush.

He refilled the glasses. “You?”

“It is why this p-position I go to now is so important. I must . . .” His glass was empty again. She swung her gaze up to him. “Why are you dr-drinking too? You are not chilled.”

“A gentleman never allows a lady to drink alone.” He held the glass in the palm of his hand with ease. Except he was not at ease. Tension seemed to set his shoulders, and his jaw was hard with restraint.

Restraint?

“You are not a g-gentleman. Are you?” she said. “You did not seem so when you denied my request for passage in Plymouth.”

“Which I then recanted.”

“And teased me about your b-bed.”

“A show of gracious generosity on my part.”

“Not just now.”

“That was to put you at ease.”

“What sort of women d-do you usually speak with so that you could imagine that would have put me at ease?”

His eye hooded. “I am a sailor, Miss Caulfield.”

Oh.

But . . . champagne? And his clothing . . . it was very fine. Handsome. He looked like a gentleman, except for the scar and black kerchief and shadow of whiskers on his jaw and wolfish glimmer in his eye and havoc he was wreaking with her insides.

She wasn’t thinking straight.